Sharon Stone has declared she stands with Neil Young when it comes to boycotting Spotify due to its platforming of Joe Rogan's podcast.
The Oscar-nominated actor, whose godmother and grandmother both died from COVID-19, said she'd be cancelling her Spotify account "in the name of truth" - objecting to the pandemic and vaccine misinformation propagated on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Neil Young pulled his music off the streaming service in protest after nearly 300 doctors, scientists and medical experts signed an open letter demanding Spotify mitigate the "mass-misinformation events" taking place on podcasts like Rogan's.
Fellow musicians Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash followed suit, while singer and podcaster India Arie also said she would remove her content, citing Rogan's "problematic language around race".
Not being a musician or podcast host herself, Stone simply told her 225,000 Twitter followers she'd be cancelling her Spotify subscription. As well as losing two family members to COVID-19, Stone's sister and brother-in-law were both hospitalised because of the virus.
Speaking to a TMZ photographer who asked her about the situation while she was out in Beverly Hills, Stone pointed out that she has long worked as an activist in the field of infectious diseases such as HIV and AIDS, and has worked with the US Chief Medical Advisor Dr Anthony Fauci "for decades".
"I'm an infectious disease worker who has won the Nobel Peace summit Award for my work in infectious disease, Harvard Awards, Einstein Awards, you know these kinds of things," she said.
The Basic Instinct star went on to rubbish Rogan's claims he was simply sharing his own "opinions" and those of guests like Dr Peter McCullough and Dr Robert Malone, who have both been widely derided by experts for making false and unsubstantiated claims about the pandemic.
"I just want to say COVID is not an opinion-based situation and Mr Rogan thinking that his opinion or a disclaimer for the lives that he personally has affected and caused losses of, it's not an opinion," Stone told TMZ.
"Mr Rogan is risking people's lives with his idiocy and his professing that his thoughts about COVID are opinions, they aren't opinions."
Stone said COVID and infectious diseases are "fact-based situations", saying that her thoughts on the matter come from her experience of "working in overcrowded laboratories with people risking their lives to save other people's lives."
"I've stood by the bedsides of dying people for the last 25 years. I don't know how many of these people's opinions come with fact-based experience," she said, referring to celebrities like Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson, who came out in support of Rogan.
Amid mounting pressure from both the public and the artists who provide content for the platform, Spotify announced they would be updating their rules and adding a content advisory to podcast episodes that discussed COVID-19.
"He should put a disclaimer that he's an asshole and that his behaviour is dangerous," Stone said.
